Empire of Japan (IOT14)
The Empire of Japan was a militant nation and the primary antagonist state in early Imperium Offtopicum XIV. Its behaviour strongly paralleled Imperial Japan of the 1930s and 40s, pursuing aggressive expansion into China and Vietnam that provoked two wars in which Japanese armed forces routinely committed atrocities against civilian and military populations alike, culminating in a nuclear strike on Cairo in 2106 and the complete destruction of Hanoi during the occupation of Vietnam. Condemned as an international pariah, Japan was at war with almost every active player country during its lifetime, its only permanent ally the short-lived Oceanic Empire. While Japan was nominally a constitutional monarchy, the conspiratorial prime minister Takeshi Ruchang spent his career wresting ever-greater political power, and by the outbreak of the civil war in 2106 the country had degenerated into a dysfunctional totalitarian state. History In the Summer of 2104, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of eastern China under the guise of a peacekeeping mission to combat a local warlord named Sun Ce. The following autumn it expanded its operations into Vietnam after widespread human rights atrocities were brought to public attention. The initial assault was conducted with "shock-and-awe" tactics that obliterated local infrastructure. Monaco and the United Arab Republic denounced what they saw as opportunistic land grabs and colonial exploitation of Chinese and Vietnamese labour and resources, charging that Japanese intervention was motivated purely by profit and its strategy was worsening the situation. Japan attempted to establish regional hegemony by founding the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, expanding on an alliance made with the Gangnam Republic earlier that summer. It courted Mongolia, the Malaccan Federation, the Indo-Persian Kingdom, and Sichuan, of which only Indo-Persia joined. Gulf of Tonkin incident Countries suspicious of Japanese designs on Vietnam established a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping mission to ensure further actions adhered to a humanitarian mandate. Forces were deployed to the country in the winter of 2104, establishing a safe zone around Ho Chi Minh City, but contact was lost with a convoy destined for Hanoi in the Gulf of Tonkin. Intelligence later came to light revealing the Imperial Japanese Navy was under standing orders to fire upon UN vessels, provoking widespread international condemnations and demands for an official inquiry. The Japanese government initially conceded to an independent inspection both of the incident and its continental activities, only to stall the organizational process. Exhausted by Tokyo's obstinacy, following the recovery of the HMS Rosemary in 2105 the General Assembly voted 8-1 to suspend Japan. Tokyo withdrew from the UN shortly thereafter. Vietnamese belligerence Although Japan did not vote against Resolution 4, it subsequently attempted to revoke UNVIFOR and refused to cooperate with the mission. The result was a de facto partition of Vietnam between UN peacekeepers and the Japanese army. In an act of spite in 2105, it established a Vietnamese puppet state, although the government had no independent army and little actual power and was not recognized by the international community. As international observers predicted, Japanese aggression served to galvanize local resistance, and surviving northern warlords united under the Council of Hanoi. Japan immediately declared the junta illegitimate and attempted to pre-empt UN operations by stating the army would engage any foreign forces it encountered. Incensed, the Platonic Republic withdrew from UNVIFOR to pursue a unilateral support mission to the Council, but the fleet was intercepted and utterly destroyed, leading to a hasty, non-punitive peace. Later that Spring, Irish aid workers were killed by Japanese forces in what was widely viewed as a deliberate attack; while Tokyo paid restitution to Dublin, the action led to a UN-sanctioned embargo later that year and the escalation of combat personnel to the mission. Pacific war On July 18, 2105, the Japanese army launched an amphibious assault on UN headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City, starting the Vietnam War. The attack triggered the collapse of the Co-Prosperity Sphere after Indo-Persia, who had committed forces to UNVIFOR, severed all relations and began mobilization, soon followed by Korea, which joined the war the following season. Shortly afterward, the People's Republic of Sichuan delivered the Zhengzhou Ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of Japanese forces from China, the rejection of which led Sichuan to declare war. Necessitated by Japan's declaration that it would engage in total war, the General Assembly amended the mission mandate to authorize the use of aggressive force against the Japanese. Under the guise of national emergency, Ruchang suspended the constitution and instituted martial law. With Imperial assent he appointed himself Shogun, assuming complete control of the armed forces and personal command of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The IJN locked down the South China Sea as the Vietnam expedition launched a mass assault on the Northeast Region in a failed attempt to seize a secret nuclear stockpile before UN forces could remove it. While state propaganda maintained the Japanese army was winning on all fronts, its only major victory was against the Greco-Roman landing at Taiwan that crippled both countries' militaries for the rest of the game. On all other fronts it entered into relative stalemate; by 2106 it had lost control of southern Vietnam and was expelled from its brief foothold in Tianjin. Nuclear escalation and international denouncement Hinting at Japan's growing desperation, it began using both local civilians and prisoners of war for slave labour in construction of hasty defensive networks. It also deliberately infected both captured and killed enemy soldiers with biological agents, returning them to the front in a bid to stall the Allied advance as the army prepared to retreat from Vietnam to reinforce the foundering Chinese front. Having failed to produce a clear victory, Ruchang began to suffer a decline in popular support that intensified following a major earthquake in Tokyo in the summer of 2106. The government responded by arming right-wing militias to intimidate political opposition, leading to endemic bouts of nation-wide riots that typically ended with thousands of deaths apiece. On 14 September, Japan launched a nuclear missile on the Egyptian capital city Cairo. This combined with the systematic destruction of Hanoi was the final straw for the international community, and the United Nations adopted Resolution 14 that indicted the Japanese government for widespread and wanton war crimes and crimes against humanity, declaring Japan a rogue state and officially sanctioning the Allied coalition to arrest the government and military leadership. Poison food crisis, decline and collapse Japan's crumbling war effort was compounded by a nationwide food poisoning in 2106. Despite positing itself as neutral, the Indonesian Republic had secretly conspired to undermine Japan through the sabotage of BulkProd exports, which led to the death of twenty million people within only a few weeks. Initially pinned on the Allies, the crisis enabled Ruchang to rally popular outrage and seize the offices of recently deceased civil servants. With Japan's domestic situation on the verge of collapse, the Allies attempted to broker an end to the war, calling for the government's capitulation and the surrender of Ruchang et al. to an international criminal court. Emboldened by international confusion surrounding the poison crisis and criticism of the terms of surrender, Japan refused to submit, deploying even more troops to the Chinese front. Fearing for their lives and/or out of disillusionment, Japanese citizens began a frantic emigration to Korea. The military's attempt to enforce order led to dockyard butchering. Fed up with government obstinacy in the face of decisive defeat, officers began to mutiny; in early winter Ruchang's brother General Takeshi Shiro led a rebellion that degenerated into civil war for control of the country. On 12 January 2107 Shiro executed Ruchang as the latter attempted to flee abroad, but was unable to stabilize the situation and later fled to the Philippines. Japan descended into anarchy, and the UN organized an emergency peacemaking mission that deployed to the country in the spring. Politics Japan was originally a constitutional monarchy under Emperor Iwao. After becoming Prime Minister in 2098, Takeshi Ruchang began an aggressive campaign to turn the government into his personal dictatorship. The invasions of China and Vietnam were intended to supply manpower and raw materials to bootstrap the Japanese economy, and thereby earn political capital. Under the emergency powers claimed during the Vietnam War, Ruchang's government turned expressly authoritarian, beginning brutal crackdowns on political dissent, targeting left-wing parties and pacifists specifically. Ruchang's consolidation of power led to a proportional erosion of civic tradition, and his appointment as Shogun in 2105 was ridiculed by Chinese scholars as anachronistic, culturally incongruent, and totally unjustifiable within the context of the original constitution."A small treatise on the fallacious nature of the new Japanese Shogunate and on the inherent immediate fall of Japan", Union of China, 2106. By the time Ruchang was declared Crown Prince in 2106, any sense of governmental stability had been eradicated by totalitarian despotism, and during the civil war all sense of statehood imploded altogether. Foreign relations From the game's outset, Japanese foreign relations were based on military power, as demonstrated by its policy in China and Japan. It aspired to become an Asiatic superpower and attempted to unite East Asia under the Co-Prosperity Sphere, but this ineffectual alliance collapsed after the outbreak of the Vietnam War. It was generally belligerent toward the international community, refusing to comply with United Nations resolutions, leading to its suspension and subsequent withdrawal in 2105. Aggressive chauvinism combined with a deplorable track record of human rights abuses both at home and abroad meant that by 2106 the country was an international pariah, maintaining relations only with the Indonesian Republic, Pan-American Union, its Vietnamese puppet, and the Oceanic Empire, a late ally that despite steadfast verbal support ultimately remained noncommittal. See also * Empire of Vietnam (IOT14) * Empire of Thailand (IOT14) * Pacific War (IOT14) References Category:Former dictatorships Category:Japanese-speaking countries and territories Category:Asian countries Category:Colonial empires Category:Colonial states in Asia Category:Countries in IOT14